Some Directors Won’t Stay Behind Camera

Trivia question: Who made the most number of appearances in the movies of Alfred Hitchcock?

The answer, of course, is Hitchcock himself.

The director, who had a way of popping up in newspaper ads, neon signs and other unlikely places, is the most famous example of a filmmaker who didn’t always stay behind the scenes. While Hitchcock’s cameos were derided by some as self-promotion, other directors haven’t hesitated to do the same.

Oliver Stone shows up as a college professor in “The Doors,” which he also directed. Roman Polanski slashes Jack Nicholson’s nose in “Chinatown.” Francis Ford Coppola did a guest shot in his own “Apocalypse Now.”

Most filmmakers slip in and out of a scene unnoticed, but some have become familiar faces. John Huston used his rugged looks and husky voice to great effect in “Chinatown,” and received an Academy Award-nomination as best supporting actor in the 1963 drama “The Cardinal.” The bald, sinister-looking Otto Preminger, who directed “The Cardinal,” made a memorable appearance a decade earlier as the commandant in “Stalag 17.”

Curly-haired Sydney Pollack was praised for his work in Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives,” and can be spotted in a party scene in “The Player.” Earlier, he made a memorable appearance as Dustin Hoffman’s agent in “Tootsie,” for which he won plaudits as both director and actor. John Sayles, tall and dark-haired, played journalists in both “Malcolm X” and his own “Eight Men Out.”

After Erich von Stroheim’s directing career faded, he was featured in the classics “Grand Illusion” and “Sunset Boulevard.”

Spike Lee has been in all of his own movies and Martin Scorsese has cast himself in several of his films, notably as a thug in “Mean Streets” and as one of Robert De Niro’s passengers in “Taxi Driver.”

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Directors Paul Mazursky and John Schlesinger started out as actors and occasionally make appearances in movies. Federico Fellini was in Mazursky’s “Alex in Wonderland.” David Cronenberg played a gynecologist in “Dead Ringers,” a film he directed.

Steven Spielberg and John Landis are the most active in-house employers. Cronenberg appeared in Landis’ “Into the Night.” Francois Truffaut played a scientist in Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Spielberg appears in Landis’ “The Blues Brothers.” Landis can be seen in Spielberg’s “1941.”

Others turning up on camera include Nicholas Ray in “Hair,” Ken Russell in “The Russia House,” James Ivory in “The Europeans” and Cecil B. DeMille as himself in “Sunset Boulevard.”